


Scar Tissue

by cosmicallybrownie



Category: Satan and Me (Webcomic)
Genre: Hospitals, Limb loss, death mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-06
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-07-29 15:30:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7689979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicallybrownie/pseuds/cosmicallybrownie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Doctors take an oath to heal, but in human hospitals Raphael’s hands are tied. He stands helpless and is unable to do anything but watch the destitute souls in hospital beds fight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scar Tissue

Nothing burned quite as bad as failure.

Dread tasted sharp in his mouth, curling down his throat and streaking its black fingers across his skin. He couldn’t see if the black handprints he felt manifested as physical marks on his skin.

(they were never there)

He felt the scream bubble in his chest, and he could smell the charred flesh. _Uriel._ Another angel on his table, irreparable from his brother when they were just trying to do good.

(was there any good left?)

They always scream and Raphael and could feel the Fear. It sat heavy in the room as an uninvited guest, slowly letting the air out of his lungs like a leaking balloon. Bones protruded in angles they were never meant to go, and there was so much blood. How could a body hold that much blood? It felt sharp against his skin, like needles stabbing into his fingertips as he searched desperately for a way to make it stop. Make It stop. God, please make it stop.

(blood is danger)

Human hospitals smelled like the color white. Too clean, too impersonal. They were filled with rushed souls, souls once open, but now the rich hearts were closed off and wrapped in sterile gauze. He heard echoes, _don’t get involved, you’ll only hurt._ Capable hands were piloted by steel hearts and aching souls. Anguish rolled off of them and he felt their compassion that had been forged into hardened experience.

Doctors’ souls lit up when they touched the strong souls. But Raphael could sense them so much better when the body was weak; the feeble souls made him feel like he was gasping for breath in a sea of blood. The brightest red he’d ever seen burned in the bed of a mother, the weeping souls of her children and husband surrounding her. An accident stole from her. Grief seared in the souls of her family as the legs on the woman’s soul shattered like glass and blew away like sand. Her family stood without her.

(she assured her children that her arms would hug them twice as hard now)

Death lingered in the corner of the room, neither giving up his position nor staking his claim. The soul of the patient in bed ached and Raphael could taste his pain like a pin under his tongue. How a human could survive in such pain, he didn’t know. His hands brushed along the man’s swollen body and he felt his body tense, but the man didn’t even have enough energy to groan or pull away. Death came closer and the man’s soul was suddenly so cold it send a shiver through Raphael’s spine.

His soul froze and glass overtook its soft form from the middle outward, frost creeping over the edges and cracking the skin where it touched. The frost formed where Raphael’s hand brushed and he pulled his hand away, feeling the ice on his fingertips. He cradled his hand to his chest and stumbled back as the human doctor rushed in, a cloud of uncertainty hanging over her soul. He heard orders barked that made no sense, and backed out of the room while the rushed souls of nurses came in.

(he could feel the cracks form on his fingers)

Matching bodies, but individual souls lay side by side in the hospital bed. A sun-bright soul illuminated the darker one it was intertwined with. Branches from the healthy wrapped around the lively soul of the ill, shrouding it in a veil of fierce protection. The air around him was punctuated by the beep of the heart monitor and the wheezes of the sick silenced by the soothing words of her sister. She was the guardian of her frail body, weak from years of illness with no reprieve. Her blood ran too thin, and the walls of her heart were too weak to pump her blood like she needed. Her twin was like a lap dog, small but severe, biting away the probing hands of the doctors who wanted to inspect her sister more than she thought necessary. It was a reverse role of comfort to see the infirm patting her sister’s arm and assuring her the doctor was just doing her job.

The parents of the girls sat strangely silent in the room, their souls folded in and crumpled like discarded receipt paper and just as pale. Their presence sucked the life out of the room more assuredly than their daughter’s illness. The sickest had the most impassioned soul in the room, casting a flickering candle of light across the faces of her family’s souls. Her sister absorbed the warmth like a sponge and wrapped around her like vines creeping towards the light source. Protect and grow. Their love was reflected in their symbiotic relationship and couldn’t be stamped out even as their parents projected their fears onto the healthy. The bark of her soul was a magnet for the responsibilities to stick to, so much that Raphael feared for her soul to go near water because she would drown, weighed down by worries the small girl shouldn’t have to carry.

The alarms blared and her heartrate was suddenly too high. Her sister responded first, her hands on the sick’s face long before the doctors enter the room. _Breathe, sissy, just like we do._ Her words came chillingly calm, but the frail girl’s chest did not steady. Her paper thin parents never moved to comfort the wheezing child. Doctors rushed in then, and the girls were pulled apart. The protests of the healthy were overshadowed by the barked orders of the doctor, trying desperately to pull the girl back from death’s cold hands. _It’s never been this bad before,_ she sobbed and paced the room, wrapping her arms around herself. The branches of her soul grew brittle without the light of her sister and the young girl tried hard to swallow her cries while her sister’s heart collapsed on itself.  

The bright girl was taken to surgery, pulling the sunshine away from the room, and it was abruptly so solemn and shadowy. The doctors returned alone, and somehow the shadows grew darker.

(he wondered if the illness or the separation played a bigger role in her death)

Fools, they were fools. Why couldn’t they see it? Why didn’t they _see?_ The surgeon had nicked the colon and it was leaking infection into the young girl’s body. He stood over her bed with a hand on her stomach while she burned crimson below him. Poison ran through her veins, masquerading as her blood and killing her from the inside. _Sepsis,_ the sterile white soul declared.

They pumped antibiotic after antibiotic into the girl’s body, desperately trying to kill the toxin but not to fix the problem. Raphael soothed the fever from her forehead and held her hand as the doctors ran test after test trying to figure out what was wrong with her. The fingertips of her soul were spots of white amongst the inflamed red as she clung to life as hard as her little hands could manage. They couldn’t figure it out. It was too late now, earthly medicine wouldn’t be enough to save her from the death in her veins. Raphael let go of her hand.

(blood is danger)

The room was silent, like they were afraid if they spoke, the young boy’s delicate condition would shatter. His family waited on bated breath. The doctor successfully removed the tumor from the boy’s brain and everything was going to okay, the surgery was flawless. It had to be. The boy was unconscious, but hope burned so bright in his soul Raphael felt the joy of heaven in the room. Shoving his hands into the pockets of his lab coat so they wouldn’t shake, he watched the neurosurgeon smile down at the boy as he blinked his eyes open. Instead of the smile, smoke poured into his soul, fire hot with panic. The boy clawed at his own eyes and Raphael heard the sobs _I can’t see I can’t see I can’t see._

A tarnish set on the boy’s soul, dark as the clouds of smoke and twice as ugly. The angel watched as black fingers stole all the color from the boy’s soul; the overwhelming shadow pulled all the green to sleep, streaking his soul full of muted grays. The doctor’s diagnosis rang down the hallways and resonated in the souls of everyone in the room. Blind.

(the young boy didn’t know how lucky he was)

He couldn’t linger in the human hospitals; he didn’t have orders to stay or to help. It was his duty to return to heaven, return to order, return to patients who didn’t even need him. The fate of the afflicted angels was decided long before they ever made it to his table. Raphael’s hands twitched at his sides, desperate to help but unable to try. His talents went to waste as he waited for God to speak, but he was always silent. Raphael left the hospitals, leaving broken bodies behind, their souls afraid and crying out to God for mercy, for an end, for anything.

Withered souls were his penance for obedience.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!  
> This fic and all others can be found on my tumblr account under my writing tag  
> cosmicallybrownie.tumblr.com/tagged/hot-off-the-presses


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